Azernews.Az

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The US State Department supports the appointment of former State Department official Matthew Bryza as the next US ambassador to Azerbaijan, its spokesman has told Voice of America.

"Mr Bryza is our nominee for the American ambassador in Baku. He has the qualities required to do the job, and we hope that the Senate will approve his nomination in the soonest time possible," said the spokesman, who asked not to be named.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved President Obama’s nomination on Tuesday. But pro-Armenian Senators Barbara Boxer and Robert Menendez opposed the White House nomination. Further, reports began to circulate that Boxer would veto tabling the appointment in the Senate.

VoA’s Azerbaijan bureau has contacted the offices of Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Democratic Senator John Kerry, his deputy, Republican lawmaker Richard Lugar, as well as Senator Boxer. The senators neither dismissed nor confirmed these reports, saying they were unaware of them.

The right to put an indefinite "hold" on the president’s ambassadorial appointment is a privilege of all US senators that could be exercised at the Senate committee level. As long as the hold is in place, the legislature cannot vote on the White House nominee’s appointment.

The post of US ambassador to Azerbaijan has been vacant for 14 months. The Foreign Relations Committee has held numerous hearings on Bryza’s appointment. Earlier, in August, discussions on Bryza’s nomination were postponed due to the efforts of several senators led by Barbara Boxer.

Bryza has a near-22-year-long diplomatic career that put him at the center of the South Caucasus’ strategic issues. As deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2005 to 2009, Bryza coordinated US energy policy in the Black and Caspian Sea regions, and represented the U.S. on the OSCE’s Minsk Group talks on a resolution of Azerbaijan’s 22-year conflict with Armenia over the occupied region of Nagorno Karabakh.

Under President Bill Clinton, he served as a deputy advisor on Caspian Sea energy diplomacy and worked on US government efforts to develop a network of oil and gas pipelines in the region.